The invention relates to an automatic bowling alley, particularly a table bowling alley having a pin support plate provided at one end of a bowling lane that receives the pins and with which a pin setup frame is associated that has a pin magazine disposed above the pin support plate, and having a control console provided at the other end of the bowling lane.
In a bowling alley, when the pins are not secured on a cable, with which they can be righted again and positioned on the provided space following a throw, special devices are required with which the fallen pins collected in a pin pit are raised afterwards, supplied to a pin distributor and then placed, at the correct location, onto the bowling alley. The mode of operation of such a pin setup frame is relatively complicated in that it is provided in many bowling game regulations that a second throw is to be taken at the pins still standing after the first throw. Thus, the full set of pins is not to be positioned on the bowling alley each time, which leads to considerable problems in the distribution of the loosely piled-up, fallen pins.
To remedy these problems, a pin setup device for positioning cable-free pins on a pin placement surface is already known from DE-OS 2,259,336; this device comprises a pin magazine disposed above the pin placement surface and having throughgoing openings for pins, and a pin placement surface below this, which can be raised and lowered and has fallen pin pipes that are oriented toward the throughgoing pin openings, with the inside diameter of the fallen pin pipes being only slightly larger than the maximum outer diameter of the pin. The pin placement plate has on its top side gripper forks which can be extended into and retracted from the fallen pin pipes by their fork arms at a right angle to the falling direction of the pins, the gripper fork spacing being less than the pin head diameter. For the case that, following a throw, fallen pins should be cleared away and standing pins should maintain their position, first the standing pins must be lifted, the fallen pins must be cleared away, and subsequently the lifted pins are returned to their old position on the pin placement surface. This requires, along with the additional pin placement plate having the gripper forks associated with the fallen pin pipes, an additional clearing mechanism for the fallen pins.